Stage 15; I've started painting in the larger bergs, at the back, and their reflections.

Stage 14; The water is now complete. All that remain are the larger bergy-bits and the two king penguins.

Stage 13; I have now reached the stage where the glacier reflection becomes broken by the reflection of the sky along the top horizon of the ice face.

Stage 12: Towards the bottom of the picture, where the water is nearer to us the viewer, the horizontal ripples become more noticeable. I still start by painting in the water as vertical bars of colour but am conscious that these verticals will in places be broken by horizontal ripples.

Stage 11; I'm gradually working around the picture, painting in the glacier reflection in the water and working in the brash ice as I go. I use a plumb line hung in front of the picture to make sure that the reflections are exactly below the the piece of the glacier that is being reflected.

Stage 10; I am working the smaller brash ice into the wet paint of the water as I go whilst painting round the larger, 'bergy bits' that I had already blocked in in the early stages. I will paint these in properly once the water is finished. It would be difficult to paint larger pieces of ice into wet paint because the brush would pick up too much of the base layer and muddy the colour. This is particularly true when trying to render clear, fresh greens and blues.

Stage 9; I've starting painting in the water. It was a still day, the sea made even calmer by the presence of floating ice on the surface, which seem to absorb surface disrurbance from any slight breeze there may have been. Nevertheless, there were tiny ripples on the sea, the effect of which is to slightly blur reflections into vertical bands of colour and tone. For this reason I am using vertical brush strokes over which I will lay a few horizontal lines to indicate ripples.

Stage 8; After several days I have almost completed the glacier-front; just the bottom right-hand corner left to do and then I can start on the water. The colours I've used for the ice in the painting seem to change quite markedly depending on the light, time of day etc. It has therefore been very difficult to photograph it for this blog with any degree of consistency, so my apologies if the colour seems to shift from one post to the next!

Stage 7; I'm gradually working along the glacier face developing the complex structure of the ice.